Insurance that kills

A helicopter arrives at the scene of the crashFrom Metro.co.uk

The great Piers Corbyn popped in when I wrote the first post about the 10:10 video. His comment on that thread is the most popular (rated by thumbs up) of any of the 38,000 comments on this site (110 thumbs up). This below is that comment, which fits with my recent theme of What’s the harm in acting?

For those who don’t know, Piers uses solar factors and writes long range weather forecasts and does it with uncanny accuracy — he predicted the Copenhagen Blizzards a month before Copenhagen. His site is Weather Action. He’s so good at predicting atmospheric action that over 12 years, he won so many bets on the weather the bookies gave up and begged him to stop. (The odds were set by the UK met office.)

He discusses the often unseen but deadly costs of bad decisions. In this case, Natasha Jade Paton might still be alive today if authorities had sought better advice than that from deeply flawed climate models. Piers warned them they would run out of road salt.

There are thousands of people who think that “taking insurance” is like paying an extra $10 on your Pan Am ticket in case you have to cancel — i.e. irrelevant and minor. But the real costs of changing our energy systems (when we don’t need too) or building an unnecessary currency (affecting virtually every transaction around the globe) are v-a-s-t. Piers captures one specific example below of the deadly cost of bad decisions.

10:10 threatened to kill people, but Piers points out that their incompetence already does.

From Piers Corbyn

ACTUALLY THE CO2-CLIMATE CHANGE LOBBY DOES KILL PEOPLE

Yes it’s a sick film but ironically the CO2 – climate change lobby and climate fraudsters are already causing deaths.

For example a number of people were killed on UK and European icy roads last winter (and Spring) due to the fact that the UK and Europe ran out of road salt. This running out of road salt was because Councils and Government heeded the Met Office advice that there would be a mild winter and ignored our WeatherAction warnings that the UK would run out of road salt.

As I explained to Hilary Benn on Sept 29th at the Labour conference in Manchester the reason why the Met Office long range forecasts were so deadly wrong last winter (and the one before etc etc) was because they back-tested them using (as well as failed assumptions ) CRU data which was fraudulently made warmer than reality so forecasts based on that are bound to come out too warm and cause deaths which could otherwise have been avoided.

I made the point specific in a recent video giving the tragic example of the child killed on 31st March in a school bus which crashed on snow covered black ice in Lanarkshire. See VIDEO and pdf .

Around the world thousands die from extreme weather events the solar-based forecasts of which are ignored by governments because they do not want to upset the CO2-Climate Change ideology on which they rely to control energy, resources, the public and to raise carbon taxes and boost the carbon trading bubble of false value.

Thank you

Piers

I wrote about other costs in The Skeptics Handbook I, but there are thousands of impacts all over the world. When someone says we should follow the precautionary principle, ask them how many people they are prepared to kill …

49 comments to Insurance that kills

Excellent post! I am a big fan of Piers Corbyn! I believe that the government should plan and make allowances for any and all realistic weather scenarios. Incredibly, when there is a cold weather event it is, according to the proponents of the falsified CAGW hypothesis, proof of Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Disruption! The precautionary principal is analogous to spending a million dollars a year for flood insurance for a house valued at $250,000 and built on a desert mountaintop!

The whole scam is nothing but a gigantic waste of the taxpayers’ money! How many people died because money was wasted fighting a nonexistent threat instead of being spent on the real problems that humanity faces?

Fantastic post! Thank you, Piers Corbyn. And also thank you, Orange, for the link. It was already clear that the bullying of the population into submission would expend into that other field, the field where they also claim to protect us against ourselves wrongfully still named “health care”.

How can you bring this up without talking about biofuels? How many people died in 2008 when the cost of grains doubled and the money for food aid (already insufficient) only went half as far? Now in 2010, the US’s smarter than everyone administration increases the ethanol content allowed in fuel even thought there is ample evidence it has no effect on CO2 but many other negative environmental effects. The big body count on the “consensus science” lies with the truely impoverished dieing of famine while we refill the fuel tank with corn ethanol rather than provide grain that could have fed them.

[True. The ethanol rort is possibly the best known example of suffering and death due to policies based on poor science. Please, everyone, keep listing all the specific examples, I want to build a one page list with links to the many and varied costs. JN

The first time I heard the phrase “the Precautionary Principle” was in relations to military thinking during the Vietnam war.

It was used in relation to the question of whether a village provided a base of operations for the Viet Nam Cong San (Vietcong, to the Americans), or not. This is a trinary question: the village was either friendly, hostile, or unknown.

If it was friendly, that was OK, and if it was hostile, the military knew what to do, but it is was unknown, then the commander on the ground had to radio for instructions.

The instructions received were invariably to treat as hostile under the precautionary principle.

In that case, the Precautionary Principle cost lives — people will try to defend their livelihood — but from the military view-point it was the safest course of action.

It seems it is still costing lives.

By applying “The Precautionary Principle”, people make decisions based on cost reduction (financial, material, emotional) to themselves, calling it “being prudent”.

The fact is, that they are too myopic, lazy, or self-centred, to properly identify the alternatives, weigh the evidence, and assess the likely outcomes, and then come to the realisation that their initial “gut-feel” had a whole raft of unintended consequences.

That other people might, shock-horror, be adversely affected by (or even die as a result of) their actions; totally escapes them.

My car went through two diesel injector pumps during the cold spell that we had in darkest Lanarkshire (Scotland) last winter. Nothing to do with the 7% biofuel in the diesel of course. All our tractors were under cover during the biggest frosts and with extra kerosene in the diesel they just about functioned, though we had to have complete sets of fuel filters to hand mainly because the fuel systems on modern tractors are so exposed. One tractor that was outside during the worst of the frost just would not start even though it had ran the day before. I experienced extreme cold in the 80′s (-22C)about 4C colder than the extreme of last winter, I don’t remember the same problems.

Some thoughts…
Mandated ethanol content has little to do with CO2, little to do with fuel security, and much to do with supporting farm prices i.e. subsidies to farmers. I write this as a LNP supporting, farming background resident of a cane growing area. And don’t put E10 in any small motor- or older car. I don’t use it at all unless I have to in my (fairly new) car.
Food is a world commodity- if the price rises in Chicago it rises in Australia- but also in Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia… A subsidy in one part of the world is paid for by consumers everywhere. If they can’t pay, they go short, and riot and starve.
When will people learn there is no such thing as a free feed? There is a cost, often unseen and unintended, for everything we do. The mere fact that there is controversy about global warming means I am sitting here on my computer when I could be productively doing something more worthwhile. Multiply that by billions. Death and hardship results.
Ken

The whole issue with palm oil and its use as fuel just drives me nuts; the ecological damage being done in ripping up rain forests to plant this ‘cash crop’ totally outweighs any Co2 or associated environmental benefits. Plus palm oil usage in food.. read up on trans fats and palm oil, your swapping one label declared bad boy for another none label declared bad boy – i.e. it looks healthier on the label but actually isn’t.

The way to make things better is to set up the car market to really make it worth the whole to operate a more efficient vehicle – i.e. above a certain ‘minimum driving’ engine size to weight ratio progressively ramp up the new purchase tax and the yearly tax. The minimum driving engine size takes account of the fact newer engines can adjust their driven capacity to suit conditions (i.e. cylinders in use).

I think the whole ethanol/palm oil fuel issue is very bad band aid when we really need proper incentives to improve overall efficiency.

Keith @13. I am aligned with this way of thinking too. I find nothing particularly “bad” about aiming for better efficiency or improving on energy consumption rates, but to link it with CO2 and claim it makes best use of resources to avert a potential/future calamity (ie taking out insurance) is ludicrous.

If any technology is out there that has an edge or a niche, it will be exploited. Aftetall, there’s LOTS of arguaments/logic put forward around sites like these that have the theme “follow the money trail” to find the real motives.

…More than 25,000 elderly people died of cold last winter, according to official figures….there were 23,900 [est. over 35,000 last year] more deaths in England and Wales than the average for non-winter months, including 19,200 among those aged 75 and over….until fuel poverty is eradicated, older people’s lives will continue to hang in the balance……the average fuel bill has risen from £572 in 2003, when the payments system was established, to £924 today…

Having purchased, rented, or placed a down payment on all the political influence up for sale in America, leftist troublemaker George Soros now plans to ramp up his war on markets worldwide by creating an “Institute for New Economic Thinking” (INET).

“The system we have now has actually broken down, only we haven’t quite recognized it and so you need to create a new one and this is the time to do it,” Soros told the Financial Times last month.

Orange @ 23; interesting report. If it were the US I’d be saying “they are doing that and cap and trade isn’t even implemented yet”. But the warmists say; “what proof do you have about the supposed economic impacts?”

On another note, does anyone know if carbon credits are transferrable from the US CCX exchange to the European ECX exchange?

We know ICE owns both since they purchased the CCX for an extraordinary $600m this year when carbon trading had died in the US. But if carbon credits can be bought for $.05/ ton in the US and sold on the EU exchange for €15+ there is monumental profits to be made. Trading a forced commodity like thin air is the worlds greatest white collar crime.

The media hinders scientific advancements due to the one sided reporting. Much of the media depends on government availability to speak with them and in many cases are being subsidized. This gives governments the okay to push policies and have the excuse that the science is behind it. Who gives out government grants? Who needs these government grants? Certainly gives the excuse to raise taxes based on what scientists say.
Private industry and private investors are looking for a return on their investments unless it is a donation. 2-3% return used to suffice for investors but seeing others get 10-30% return has made industry in the developed world non-competitive.

As a (left)libertarian I would say that it is not the government’s job to provide salt for icy roads. Clearly, the driver was at fault for not being able to handle his/her machinery in a professional and safe manner.

As for people freezing to death during winter for the want of heating. I call that what it is; a social problem. Society(western) has the means to provide the basics for survival. That we fail, has more to do with the way we organise our economy and social policies than any increase in cost of heating energy.

This same argument holds true for the recent food riots. Sure, the increase in the cost of food has had an effect. But, it is not the responsibility of western economies to provide developing nations with cheap food, clothing and shelter. Any nation that can’t get it’s act together to provide it’s citizens with the basics of life, at an affordable cost, has far bigger problems to overcome than the AGW circus. It’s not like humanity can’t produce enough food to feed everyone(and that day will never come too).

To blame these issues on the AGW crowd is to ignore the fundamental issues that create these problems in the first place. The greenies are only exacerbating an underlying problem which will remain long after AGW is dead and buried. I’d rather see us focusing on the larger social issues. The fear mongering by those that seek power and the violence they perpetrate on anyone that doesn’t conform to their world-view. Let’s forget the symptoms and investigate the cause, this is a pointless detour. IMHO

The CO2 – climate change lobby and climate fraudsters need to be held to account.

The only way this global warming fraud issue is ever going to be brought under control is not by more research and new peer reviewed scientific literature (which seems to make no difference to policy makers). What will make a difference is legal action. The precedent has already been set by our Kiwi cousins:

If this sort of legal action re “Kiwigate” can be taken across the world, from Australia to the US, and across to Britain and Europe, I have no doubt the results would be the same as we saw in the New Zealand court.

So how can we encourage legal action to be taken in countries around the world, as was taken by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) against the NZ government?

Thank you for your comments. I find them both intriguing and thought provoking.

I couldn’t agree more with the following comment you made:

The greenies are only exacerbating an underlying problem which will remain long after AGW is dead and buried.

The preamble to the United States Constitution (emphasis mine):

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I am sure Australia has something similar in its constitution.

As a (left)libertarian I would say that it is not the government’s job to provide salt for icy roads. Clearly, the driver was at fault for not being able to handle his/her machinery in a professional and safe manner.

I believe that all drivers should drive safely. However, it is in the interest of the “common good” of the people for the government to provide safe roads. Moreover, the funding for the road does come from the taxpayer and the taxpayer is entitled to what he paid for.

But, it is not the responsibility of western economies to provide developing nations with cheap food, clothing and shelter.

Although developing nations had problems before the Westerners arrived it was the West that created most of the economic problems that the developing nations now face. A perfect example is DDT. You cannot export food to the EU if you spray or use DDT. DDT is perfectly safe to use and extremely effective. Millions die and economies are decimated to keep the misanthropic greens happy.

The West will mine the developing nations resources for its own use yet tell them to refrain from using their own oil, gas and coal. The enviroloons tell them not to develop hydroelectric power but to instead use solar or wind. In essence, we have condemned the poorest of the poor to a short and brutish life. I do not know how we would restore the status quo but I believe that we, The West, are morally responsible for much of what has happened and it is therefore incumbent upon us to make a good faith effort to rectify the problems we either caused or exacerbated.

If the West wants to stop giving aid to the developing nations then we need to give them the tools they need to develop their economies and stop hindering them from doing so!

I was at university with Piers and he was one of the really bright physicists of our year. It was seeing him in “The Great Global Warming Swindle” that caused me to start looking at climate science and thus to become a sceptic.

The only problem that I have with Piers is that he is a bit too keen on self-promotion.

I wouldn’t place to much emphasis on Piers’s predictions as due to the fact that he doesn’t publish his methods then it isn’t science. I haven’t got the data but I was always lead to believe that a lot of hos betting wins were due to the odds not being set correctly due to rain in UK (or anywhere) locations not being independent and picking his bets well (ie say there is a 50% channce of rain in London on December 25th – what exactly is the chance of it raining in London/Birmingham/Edinburgh… 100 places all on the same day – It can easily rain everywhere in the UK on one day..) – I think being a very smart guy, he just picked his bets well.

Regarding his self promotion, and being an ex Meteorologist, I do remember well Royal Met society meetings at Imperial College (I’m ex Imperial too) where he would plonk himself at the front and do a mini presentation to get his photo taken. The arguments always fell down to, if you don’t publish we can’t take you seriously. Despite all this I do think he is correct in that the sun is a dominant force in the climate equation.

Yet another killer…and a good reason not to carry fuel efficiency too far. Smaller, lighter cars are required to get that high mileage they want to dictate. And the small light ones don’t fare well in any kind of crash. There’s not enough metal to protect you.

Even the argument that it would be OK if all vehicles were smaller doesn’t make sense because many crashes involve a vehicle losing control and hitting a stationary object like a tree or rock; even a rollover would be deadly if the roof collapses.

Thanks for the discussion Eddy. If i could just clarify my position on a couple of points:

I believe that all drivers should drive safely. However, it is in the interest of the “common good” of the people for the government to provide safe roads. Moreover, the funding for the road does come from the taxpayer and the taxpayer is entitled to what he paid for.

I would say that if local councils are independent enough to drop all their money into Icelandic bank stocks then, they should be able to figure out how much salt they are going to need for their roads. Given that, they are the ones who understand local conditions the best.

Although developing nations had problems before the Westerners arrived it was the West that created most of the economic problems that the developing nations now face.

We, in the west, vastly overstate our role in the problems which plague third world countries. The United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund are the new colonial powers who would see every single person on the planet submit to their will. The reason why most third world countries do so is because they have weak, ineffectual political leadership. Often that is a product of internal social problems on regional and local levels, where armed conflict is common.

There are plently of examples of nations who can and do hold a red card up to TPTB and get on with building a society using their own best judgment. Argentina is a perfect example of what can be achieved with political honesty and the courage to seek self interest ahead of external pressures.

We should not fall into the western guilt trap. It is up to us to support politicians who would have us withdraw from the sham that is the UN and all it’s associated tentacles. The best chance developing nations have at prospering is without the involvement of external influences that seek only to take advantage of them.

Your example of DDT is exactly what I’m talking about. DDT ‘science’ was invented to oppress developing countries. The same is true of Climate ChangeDisruption

If the West wants to stop giving aid to the developing nations then we need to give them the tools they need to develop their economies and stop hindering them from doing so!

I couldn’t agree more. The primary tool for doing that is independence.

Waffle, what are you on? they pay council tax there and that is supposed to cover all council services, it is a nanny state, as for food? if the wealthy buy grain to make fuel (and screw up the fuel systems) then the poor cannot buy food and they die. In Canada the snow catches out a lot of drivers every year, the english are (and I am one but have some ability) crappy drivers on a dry road, dive them ice and snow and it stops them dead.

That’s what I’m getting at. To use the tactic that global warming fear mongering causes death plays right into their nanny state strategy. You might make a point with it but, you will lose the argument.

if the wealthy buy grain to make fuel (and screw up the fuel systems) then the poor cannot buy food and they die.

Why are poor countries required to buy food from rich countries? Shouldn’t each nation be responsible for its own food security?

Waffle, the government told the councils to invest in Iceland, even lent some extra money to do so we can scratch that reasoning! most starvation is caused by left wing dictators destroying the economy (Rhodesia and Haiti come to mind)
Yes each country should be feeding itself but when it is a global market skewing it by making grain in to shitty quality fuel kills the poor. Sadly left wing ideals do not mesh with reality, In the UK I knew a lot of left wingers, we had a lot of animated discussions, they were all except one either living off the government or were rich living off the poor, the exception was a libertarian in my opinion and I found that odd as it seems to me that socialist ideals exclude any vestige of libertarian ideas at all, in practice can you name one left wing government that was a) libertarian and b) successful?

No disrespect but I feel Piers Corbyn does not need to self-promote. He is very well known in Britain and many parts of the world… he has been for many years.

If authoritative scientists like Piers Corbyn, Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Fred Singer, Roy Spencer, Tim Ball, and so many others, don’t speak out in trying to expose the “man-made global warming pandemic”, the world will be at the mercy of the the likes of the IPCC.

Evil happens when good men do nothing. And these scientists, like Piers Corbyn, are all good men. And one day we will be thanking them, as well as many other individuals and bloggers such as Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, Joanne Nova, and Donna Laframboise, for the important roles they have played in educating the general public about the greatest con to have ever been perpetrated on mankind.

I’m sure Piers will pop in to confirm his story, but just in case. He started his company by betting on the weather using william hill or ladbrokes bookies. Not sure which one. They set the odds not the met off but the met off adjudicated. His forecasts were probability based as they are now and in the early days he didn’t win every bet, as he wouldn’t now, but overall he made money on a regular basis.

As his company grew with the money he was making, I believe it was by mutual agreement that he ceased the betting (although I believe the bookies were not keene to continue the facility) and built his business around his forecasting method.

I have always been a great admirer of Piers and I do find his rants against AGWers somewhat off-putting but I also accept that he has to make a living in a very competitive market and also a very hostile environment. The most stupid thing I ever saw was a BBC man complaining on behalf of the Met off that Piers wouldn’t share his method with them so they couldn’t verify it’s veracity.

To return to the original post I should perhaps point out that the bus crash at Wiston bridge is probably a poor example to use in this argument. That accident happened about 5 miles away from me here, on a dangerous bit of road in appalling weather before 6am in the morning. Nobody in their right mind can expect a road to be cleared and salted when the weather is just happening! It should also be pointed out that one wise parent wouldn’t let their child go on the trip because of the weather conditions.

I see in the press this week that it looks like no charges will be brought over the accident, that will clear the way for the fatal accident inquiry, which will examine the facts properly and hopefully give instruction to School’s that encounter similar situations in the future.

I agree BRAVO for all yje knights in shining armor who have fought for us against the gathered vultures of AGW.
As for gritting roads at 6Am why the hell not the bastards are paid enough by the public and the lazy sods should actually try to be what they are, that is public servants here in Ontario the roads have to ploughed before the school busses run and if the weather is bad then all night, for heavens sake it is a public service and they are paid to keep the roads safe, sack the lot and sub out to private companies.

Waffle, the government told the councils to invest in Iceland, even lent some extra money to do so we can scratch that reasoning!

Actually chris, local councils in Australia, under the authority of State Governments, have complete autonomy in regards to how they spend their surplus funds. All but 5 local and regional councils are incorporated entities, which makes them sovereign. It’s strange that you would frame you response to this in a leftist way, considering that we can assume you are a righty. That a local council doesn’t have the competance to figure that stuff out for itself makes it un-electable in my book.

Yes each country should be feeding itself but when it is a global market skewing it by making grain in to shitty quality fuel kills the poor.

Again, you’ve made a leftist argument. All nations can influence consumer prices through policy to protect their national interest. Tariffs being the most immediate. Why a country would leave itself vulnerable to such a simple and very solvable national security issue such as feeding it’s own population, is beyond me. If I was citizen of a country who’s government was behaving that badly I’d be taking up arms against it!

…in practice can you name one left wing government that was a) libertarian and b) successful?

A good example that springs to mind is California at the turn of the 20th century.